Welcome to the Carnival of Creativity for February 28, 2016. All links will open in a new tab or window, so feel free to click through and leave some love in the comments. Once you close that window, you’ll be right back here for more linky goodness.

bathyscaphe n
1. A self-propelled deep-sea diving submersible for exploring the ocean depths, consisting of a crew cabin similar to a bathysphere suspended below a float filled with a buoyant liquid such as petrol.

Fiction Writing Prompt: Use the word of the week in whatever you write today.

Journaling Prompt: If you could explore undersea, what would you be most interested in seeing?

Art Prompt: Bathyscaphe

Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt:Use the word of the week in your article or speech.

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. …Think about it. There’s escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist. –The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story involving wolves.

Journaling Prompt: How do you feel about wolves? Should they be reintroduced into wilderness areas or not?

Art Prompt: Wolves

Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Tell your audience about why the human psyche is drawn to wolves and stories about wolves.

When you look at the subject of aggression there is no more important factor than gender. Something like 90 percent of the people in prison for violent crimes are men. Men have different brains than women, which comes from our different roles during evolution, when the brain was formed. Men had a role of being aggressive, which makes no sense for a woman because a woman was not endowed with the physical strength of a man, who probably outweighs her. But although 90 percent of those in jail are men, 90 percent of people who have been awarded medals by the Carnegie Institute for heroism are also men. In a quarter of those cases, these are men who gave up their lives and died in an instant to do something heroic, often for a stranger. So the rage circuit is good and bad. It’s a double-edged sword…

We have these circuits because we need them. Most of the time, they work amazingly well. We don’t call it snapping unless the result of this aggressive response is inappropriate. When it works as intended we call it quick thinking or, in many cases, heroic. We have these circuits to protect ourselves, our family unit, or society. –Simon Worrall

Fiction Writing Prompt: Write the story of a person who chooses to use their rage toward being hero.

A Bonfire of the Vanities (Italian: Falò delle vanità) is a burning of objects condemned by authorities as occasions of sin. The phrase usually refers to the bonfire of 7 February 1497, when supporters of the Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola collected and publicly burned thousands of objects such as cosmetics, art, and books in Florence, Italy, on the Mardi Gras festival.[1] Such bonfires were not invented by Savonarola, but had been a common accompaniment to the outdoor sermons of San Bernardino di Siena in the first half of the century.

The focus of this destruction was nominally on objects that might tempt one to sin, including vanity items such as mirrors, cosmetics, fine dresses, playing cards, and even musical instruments. Other targets included books that were deemed to be immoral, such as works by Boccaccio, and manuscripts of secular songs, as well as artworks, including paintings and sculpture. –Wikipedia

Fiction Writing Prompt: Write the story of a bonfire of the vanities.

Journaling Prompt: Write about your feelings about books that you feel are abhorrent. Is it right to burn them or not?

Welcome to the Carnival of Creativity for February 21, 2016. All links will open in a new tab or window, so feel free to click through and leave some love in the comments. Once you close that window, you’ll be right back here for more linky goodness.